Wednesday, 25 January 2017

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. This week, we are announcing our winners of Challenge Thirty. The winner of the £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Alice, whose project was drawn by Random.org as the overall winner. Congratulations Alice, we hope that you enjoy your prize.

Please email Lesley on lesley@chocolatebaroque.com so that she can organise your voucher. You can also display our winner's badge on your blog. Details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page.

The Top Three this month have been chosen by the Design Team, who have had a tough time choosing from such a fabulous selection of entries. The Top Three in no particular order are:

Congratulations ladies, you can display the Top Three badge on your blogs. Details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Well done to everyone who entered, and we hope that you will join in with the current challenge. You can find the details here.

We have some more inspiration from the Design Team for you this week:

Julie's pretty washed background creates a lovely setting for the image taken from the Exquisite Edges stamp set. She has used a DL card horizontally to create an elegant slimline project:

Magda has created two inspirational projects that she is sharing this week. The first, a lovely haberdashery-themed card, incorporating a very pretty floral mannequin:

Her second project is a fabulous textured tag, incorporating gesso and tissue paper on the background:

Finally, Zoe is sharing her floral card created by using a mini hexagonal gelli plate on the background:

We hope that these projects will inspire you to create something yourselves for the challenge using the current colour swatch. We will be back next week with another post, and more inspiration from the Design Team, but until then, we look forward to seeing some of your entries. If you have any questions, and cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.

Wednesday, 18 January 2017

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you for your lovely comments and visits to the blog over the past month, we really appreciate your support, and love reading what you have to say. We will be announcing the winners of Challenge Thirty next week, so if you entered the challenge, be sure to check out the blog post, to see if you are the winner of our prize.

As a reminder to those of you who have visited the blog before, and for anyone who is new to the blog, our challenges are monthly, based on an inspirational photo and a colour swatch. A new challenge is launched on the third Wednesday of every month. You can use any medium to create your project; inks, paints, pens, pencils, etc., as long as you stick to the colours from the colour swatch in your project. We are offering a monthly prize of £15 to spend on Chocolate Baroque stamps to one lucky winner, who will be selected by Random.org from all of the entrants who have used Chocolate Baroque stamps currently available from the website. We welcome entries incorporating other stamps and images, but they will not be eligible for the prize. All entries will have the chance to be selected as one of our Top Three, and can then display our 'I made the Top Three at Chocolate Baroque' badge on their blogs.

We have a fabulous new colour swatch for you this month, including a piece of original artwork from Miranda. We will be sharing some beautiful inspiration from the Design Team over the coming weeks. Here is the colour swatch for the new challenge:

The challenge will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 14th February 2017, and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 22nd February 2017. Here are some projects from the Design Team:

Claire's pretty tag, incorporating a foliage border, and the duo of butterflies is finished off with bold black accents:

Anne has used a Big Bold floral background to make her stunning card, adding a lacy border, and a lovely sentiment. The challenge colours are perfect for her floral theme:

Magda's gorgeous card returns to the butterfly theme, her dreamy background provides the ideal setting for her glittery butterflies:

Thank you girls for your inspiration using the new challenge colours. We hope that they will inspire you to create something yourselves for the challenge. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our challenge blog team. You can get in touch by sending a private message, details are at the end of this post; below the comments section.

We hope that you enjoy the new challenge and look forward to seeing your projects.

Wednesday, 11 January 2017

Hello everyone, and welcome to the final week of Challenge Thirty on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. Thank you so much for your visits and lovely comments throughout the month, especially when you have been so busy throughout the Christmas period, we appreciate your support, and really enjoy reading what you have to say. We hope that you have been enjoying the current challenge. There is still plenty of time to enter, and be in with a chance of winning a £15 voucher to spend at Chocolate Baroque. You can add your entries to the link in this post.

We are taking a look this week at some of the entries we have received for the challenge so far.

Carole's elegant Art Nouveau themed card is a very eye-catching design, with the fabulous stencil in the background, and partial stamping to create a border at the top and bottom of the card:

Finally, Kate's pretty card, using the lovely honeysuckle image against the white embossed background is a lovely design. The shaped card blank adds another dimension, without the need for layers.

This month, Vronnie is going to introduce herself to you, and reveal a bit more about herself.

As a child growing up in the pre-TV old days, I always had my head in a book, either colouring or reading. Most of my pocket money was spent in the local stationers on different pens, pencils and crayons. I was lucky enough to spend four years at art colleges, moving from what was then called fine art to graphic design, and finally typography. It was great fun, and the only time my hands have been more colourful than when stamping! Amongst other things, we learnt paper sculpture- very helpful when I started quilling many years later. The quilling led to my first rubber stamp- one of the leaves, as I got fed up with quilling them- I still have it, a 4x3cm wood mounted one that cost £5.55 (yes it still has the label!)
The rot set in, I bought a few more, discovered crafting on TV, first Jayne Nesterenko and then Glenda Waterworth- quilling was forgotten, and my mitts became very colourful again- I seem to have an almost magnetic attraction for ink.
I was thrilled to win a place as a Guest Designer two years ago, which taught me a lot, and I was really over the moon when invited to join the team itself last year. As a very messy crafter, I have had to learn to keep stamp sets together instead of dumped in the nearest plastic box- the sales of stamp storage sheets have soared since then! I still have boxes of orphan stamps to sort out, and a very untidy craft area- every attempt at sorting it out properly ends up with larger heaps than before and not being able to find anything!
My Husband swears stamps are taking over the house, and my Son couldn't believe his eyes when he found a box of Brusho powders in the bathroom recently!
It is harder work sometimes than it sounds being on the DT, and I am totally in awe of those who manage to be on several teams, but it is great fun, and the girls are a fab bunch of people to work with.

Thank you Vronnie for your biography, your craft room sounds just like mine! It was great to get to know you a little better.

We will be back next week with a brand new challenge, but we hope to see lots more entries from you in the meantime. If you have any questions, and cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this post; you will see it after the comments section.

Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We hope that you are enjoying the current challenge and the inspiration provided by the Design Team. For those of you visiting the blog for the first time, do check out all of the information on the blog, especially the tabs at the top of the page, where you should be able to find the answers to all of your questions. Here is the colour swatch for this month's challenge:

You can find a link to the current challenge here, where you can add your entries at the end of the post. This week we are sharing more inspiration from the Design Team.

I have made a card using Pan Pastels rubbed over an image stamped using Versamark on kraft card. I stamped and embossed the image again onto a spare piece of card and added more Pan Pastels. This has created a lovely soft effect. You can obtain full instructions for the card on my blog.

Anne has created a beautiful card using some lovely bird related images for her focal design. Clever use of birdcages and flowers create a fabulous background.

Anne has very kindly written a tutorial for her card, so that you can try this one at home.

Directly stamp an 8" x 8" card using Distress Inks using stamps from the Floral Notes and A Little Bird Told Me stamp sets. Lightly colour the flowers with a wash of watercolour pen.
The printed paper is from Crafty Individuals (Book 7- Shades of Summer).
Stamp and heat emboss the birds in gold and the sentiment in bright pink (Mackintosh Sentiments).
Colour the birds with watercolour and glitter pens. Outline the birds a little with pale grey alcohol marker to make them stand out a little more from the background. Coat them with Glossy Accents.
Mount the decorative panel onto green card and attach to the card front with 3D foam for dimension, add a bow and faux gems to finish.

Thank you so much Anne for a great tutorial.

We hope that the projects that we have shown you this week will inspire you to join in with the challenge yourselves. We will be back next week with another post, and more projects for you. If you have any questions, and cannot find the answers on the blog pages, please send us a private message using the contact form located at the very end of this post; you will see it after the comments section.

Current Challenge

Welcome

A very warm welcome to the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We love crafting and stamping in particular and we love to share and encourage you to have a go.

We hope that you will be inspired to get your stamps inked up, make some time to play and end up with a creation you are proud to share with us all.

Please take a look around - we have tabs at the top that give you lots of information about how our challenges work and if you have any questions at all, please use the Contact page to get in touch and one of the team will get back to you.